Exeter Book

The Exeter Book, Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501, also known as the Codex Exoniensis, is a tenth-century[1] book or codex which is an anthology of Anglo-Saxon poetry. It is one of the four major Anglo-Saxon literature codices, along with the Vercelli Book, Nowell Codex and the Cædmon manuscript or MS Junius 11. The book was donated to the library of Exeter Cathedral by Leofric, the first bishop of Exeter, in 1072. It is believed originally to have contained 131 leaves, of which the first 8 have been replaced with other leaves; the original first 8 pages are lost. The Exeter Book is the largest known collection of Old English literature still in existence.

Not to be confused with Liber Exoniensis.

In 2016, UNESCO recognized the book as one of the "world's principal cultural artifacts".[2]

History

The Exeter Book is generally acknowledged to be one of the great works of the English Benedictine revival of the tenth century; the precise dates that it was written and compiled are unknown, although proposed dates range from 960 to 990. This period saw a rise in monastic activity and productivity under the renewed influence of Benedictine principles and standards. At the opening of the period, Dunstan's importance to the Church and to the English kingdom was established, culminating in his appointment to the Archbishopric at Canterbury under Edgar and leading to the monastic reformation by which this era was characterised. Dunstan died in 998, and by the period's close, England under Æthelred faced an increasingly determined Scandinavian incursion, to which it would eventually succumb.

The Exeter Book's heritage becomes traceable from 1072, when Leofric, Bishop at Exeter, died.[3] Among the treasures which he is recorded to have bestowed in his Will upon the then-impoverished monastery, is one famously described as "mycel Englisc boc be gehwilcum þingum on leoð-wisan geworht" (i.e., "a large English book of poetic works about all sorts of things"). This book has been widely assumed to be the Exeter Codex as it survives today.

Some marginalia were added to the manuscript by Laurence Nowell in the sixteenth century and George Hickes in the seventeenth.[4]

Contents

Riddles
Main article: Anglo-Saxon riddles

Among the other texts in the Exeter Book, there are over ninety riddles. They are written in the style of Anglo-Saxon poetry and range in topics from the religious to the mundane. Some of them are double entendres, such as Riddle 25 below.

Here are two of these Anglo-Saxon riddles, both in Old English and translated into modern English. The answers to the riddles are included below the text.

Ic eom wunderlicu wiht wifum on hyhte
neahbuendum nyt; nægum sceþþe
burgsittendra nymthe bonan anum.
Staþol min is steapheah stonde ic on bedde
neoðan ruh nathwær. Neþeð hwilum
ful cyrtenu ceorles dohtor
modwlonc meowle þæt heo on mec gripe
ræseð mec on reodne reafath min heafod
fegeð mec on fæsten. Feleþ sona
mines gemotes seo þe mec nearwað
wif wundenlocc. Wæt bið þæt eage.

I am a wondrous creature for women in expectation,
a service for neighbors. I harm none of the citizens
except my slayer alone.
My stem is erect, I stand up in bed,
hairy somewhere down below. A very comely
peasant's daughter, dares sometimes,
proud maiden, that she grips at me,
attacks me in my redness, plunders my head,
confines me in a stronghold, feels my
encounter directly,
woman with braided hair. Wet be that eye.

—Riddle 25 (Marsden 2015)
Answer: Onion


Mec feonda sum feore besnyþede,
woruldstrenga binom, wætte siþþan,
dyfde on wætre, dyde eft þonan,
sette on sunnan þær ic swiþe beleas
herum þam þe ic hæfde. Heard mec siþþan
snað seaxses ecg, sindrum begrunden;
fingras feoldan, ond mec fugles wyn
geond speddropum spyrede geneahhe,
ofer brunne brerd, beamtelge swealg,
streames dæle, stop eft on mec,
siþade sweartlast. Mec siþþan wrah
hæleð hleobordum, hyde beþenede,
gierede mec mid golde; forþon me gliwedon
wrætlic weorc smiþa, wire bifongen.
Nu þa gereno ond se reada telg
ond þa wuldorgesteald wide mære
dryhtfolca helm— nales dol wite.
Gif min bearn wera brucan willað,
hy beoð þy gesundran ond þy sigefæstran,
heortum þy hwætran ond þy hygebliþran,
ferþe þy frodran, habbaþ freonda þy ma,
swæsra ond gesibbra, soþra ond godra,
tilra ond getreowra, þa hyra tyr ond ead
estum ycað ond hy arstafum
lissum bilecgað ond hi lufan fæþmum
fæste clyppað. Frige hwæt ic hatte,
niþum to nytte. Nama min is mære,
hæleþum gifre ond halig sylf.

Some fiend robbed me from life,
deprived me of worldly strengths, wetted next,
dipped in water, took out again,
set in the sun, deprived violently
of the hair that I had, after, the hard
knife's edge cut me, ground from impurities,
fingers folded and a bird's
delight spread useful drops over me,
swallowed tree-ink over the ruddy rim,
portion of liquid, stepped on me again,
traveled with black track. After, a man clad
me with protective boards, covered with hide,
adorned me with gold. Forthwith adorned me
in ornamental works of smiths, encased with wire
Now the trappings and the red dye
and the wondrous setting widely make known
the helm of the lord's folk, never again guard fools.
If children of men want to use me
they will be by that the safer and the more sure of victory
the bolder in heart and the happier in mind,
in spirit the wiser. They will have friends the more
dearer and closer, righteous and more virtuous,
more good and more loyal, those whose glory and happiness
will gladly increase, and them with benefits and kindnesses,
and they of love will clasp tightly with embraces.
Ask what I am called as a service to people.
My name is famous,
bountiful to men and my self holy.

—Riddle 26 (Marsden 2015)
Answer: Bible

Elegies

The Exeter Book contains the Old English poems known as the 'Elegies': The Wanderer (fol. 76b - fol. 78a); The Seafarer (fol. 81b - fol. 83a); The Riming Poem fol. 94a - fol. 95b); Deor (fol. 100a - fol. 100b), Wulf and Eadwacer (fol. 100b - fol. 101a); The Wife's Lament (fol. 115a - fol. 115b); The Husband's Message (fol. 123a - 123b); and The Ruin (fol. 123b - fol. 124b). The term "elegy" can be confusing due to the diverse definitions from different cultures and times. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary states: "In Greek and Latin literature elegiac metre was used for poetry expressing personal sentiments on a range of subjects, including epigrams, laments, sympotic poetry, and (in Rome) love poetry. "[5] In Victorian literature, an elegy is generally a poem written for the dead and although the naming of these poems as 'elegiac' was a Victorian invention, it can be a useful term. As Anne Klinck in her book 'The Old English Elegies' writes: 'genre should be conceived, we think, as a grouping of literary works based, theoretically, upon both outer form (specific meter or structure) and also upon inner form (attitude, tone, purpose — more crudely, subject and audience)'.[6] In regards to the Exeter Book Elegies, this term can be widened to include "any serious meditative poem. "[7] The poems included in the Exeter book share common themes of longing, loneliness, pain, and the passage of time.

Editions and translations

Included here are facsimiles, editions, and translations that include a significant proportion of texts from the Exeter Book.

Facsimiles
  • Chambers, R W; Förster, Max; Flower, Robin (1933). The Exeter book of Old English poetry. London: P. Lund, Humphries. OCLC 154109449.

Editions: Old English text only
  • Krapp, George Philip; Dobbie, Elliot Van Kirk, eds. (1936). The Exeter Book. The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. III. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-08767-5.
  • Muir, Bernard J., ed. (2000). The Exeter anthology of Old English poetry: an edition of Exeter Dean and Chapter MS 3501 (2nd ed.). Exeter: University of Exeter Press. ISBN 0-85989-630-7.

Editions: Old English text and translation

Editions: Translations only
  • Crossley-Holland, Kevin (1982). The Anglo-Saxon World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-953871-3. Anthology of Old English poetry and prose, featuring poems from the Exeter Book.
  • Crossley-Holland, Kevin (2008). The Exeter Book Riddles. London: Enitharmon Press. ISBN 978-1-904634-46-1. Contains Riddles only.
  • Williamson, Craig, (2017) The Complete Old English Poems. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 9780812248470.
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See also
  • Anglo-Saxon literature
  • Old English language

References
  1. Fell, Christine (2007). "Perceptions of Transience". In Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. pp. 172–89. ISBN 978-0-521-37794-2.
  2. Flood, Alison (22 June 2016). "Unesco lists Exeter Book among 'world's principal cultural artefacts'". the Guardian. Retrieved 26 June 2016.
  3. Förster, Max (1933). "The Donations of Leofric to Exeter". In Chambers, Forster and Flower (ed.). The Exeter Book of Old English Poetry.
  4. Muir, Bernard J., ed. (2000). The Exeter anthology of Old English poetry: an edition of Exeter Dean and Chapter MS 3501 (2nd ed.). Exeter: University of Exeter Press. pp. 15–16. ISBN 0-85989-630-7.
  5. "Elegy". OED Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 5 February 2015.
  6. Klinck, Anne L. (1992). The Old English Elegies. McGill-Queen's Press. p. 224.
  7. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature (Second ed.). Broadview Press. 2011. p. 51. ISBN 9781554810482.
Bibliography
  • Williamson, Craig (1977), The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, pp. 3–28, ISBN 0-8078-1272-2
  • Marsden, Richard (2015), The Cambridge Old English Reader (2nd ed.), doi:10.1017/CBO9781107295209, ISBN 9781107295209
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